Ballads

Ballad Tunes

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

‘All in a garden green’
Handful, EV15104, ‘An excellent Song of an outcast Louer. To, All in a Garden green.’

Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 10-11, provides a transcript of the tune. A setting for the tune is in William Ballet’s MS Lute book, TCD D.I.21, p. 56, and the first eight editions of John Playford, The English Dancing Master (1651), p. 71. A different tune was given this title by William Byrd in Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, I. 411. Rollins (Handful, p. 107) states that the tune gets its name from ballad licensed by William Peckering in 1565-6, ‘All in a garden grene/between ij lovers’, and again by William Griffith in 1568-9. The tune ‘All in a garden green’, printed in Chappell, Popular Music, 1.110, can be used for EV15104, ‘An excellent song of an outcast louer’. Simpson notes: ‘The four-line stanza in poulter’s measure, syllabically 6.6.8.6, will fit the first half of the popular tune; the second half requires five lines but will fit a stanza if the third line of the quatrain be repeated.’ The first two stanzas of ‘An excellent song of an outcast louer’ were copied into O: Ashmole 48, c. 1559-65, f. 110v. See Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull’, p. 165.

‘Kinde Kit of Kingstone’ refers to the tune in Westward for Smelts (1620), sig. A3v: ‘They prayed me so to doe [to sing]: but not yet to cloy their eares with an old Fidlers song, as riding to Rumford, or, All in a Garden Greene’; the owner of a copy of William Slayter’s Psalmes, or Songs of Sion (1642; L: E.1113.(5.)) has written the names of tunes against the various psalms and places ‘Garden Greene’ against Psalms 47 and 63 (pp. 13-16).

‘Any Pleasant Tune’
Handful, EV10310, ‘A proper sonet, Intituled: I smile to see how you devise. To anie pleasant tune.’

The first line of this ballad is the title of a textless setting in the Mulliner Book, no. 88, p. 139 [fol. 86v]. See Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, p. 166.

‘Apelles’
Handful, EV23218.5, ‘The Louer being wounded his Ladis beutie, requireth mercy. To the tune of Apelles.’

A song (‘The rushyng Ryuers that do run’) in Barnabe Googe’s Eglogs epytaphes, and sonettes (1563), sig. H5-v, is headed ‘To the Tune of Appelles’, and two ballads to this tune, ‘Kynge Pollicente’ and ‘Of Appelles and Pymalyne’, were registered 1565-6 (Arber, I: 298, 312). See Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, p. 167.

‘Attend thee go play thee’
Gorgious Gallery, EV16204, ‘The Louer exhorteth his Lady to bee constant. To the Tune of Attend thee go play thee.’

Handful, EV3200, ‘The scoffe of a Ladie, as prettie as may be, to a yong man that went a wooing.’

Handful, EV1394, ‘An answer as pretie to the scof of his Lady, by the yongman that came a wooing.’

Tune takes name from first line of Handful, EV3200, ‘The scoffe of a Ladie, as prettie as may be’, which unusually does not name a tune – the tune for ‘The scoffe’ is presumably the tune later given the title ‘Attend thee go play thee’; the response EV1394, ‘An answer as pretty to the scoff of his lady’ is written in the same ballad measure, therefore it is highly likely that it was sung to the same tune. See Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, p. 156.

In Francis Merbury’s Marriage of Wit and Wisdom (1579), Scene 2, the stage directions state that ‘Here shall wantonis sing this song to the tune of attend the goe playe the’ (p. 18). Rollins (Handful, 86) suggests that Wantonness’s song probably imitates the ballad in Gorgious Gallery since it was new, rather than the older ballads in Handful.

B

‘Black Almain, The’
Handful, EV14346, ‘A proper Sonet, Intituled, Maid, wil you marrie. To the Blacke Almaine.’

Handful, EV20267, ‘The lover complaineth the absence of his Ladie, wisheth for death. To, the new Almaine.’

See also, Gorgious Gallery, EV3650, ‘In the praise of a beautiful and virtuous Virgin, whose name begins with M.’, first line ‘Behold you Dames that reign in fames, whose looks mens hearts do lead’, which refers to Stephen Peell’s, ‘A Proper New Balade Expressing the Fames, Concerning a warning to al London dames’, licensed in 1570-71: ‘You London dames, whose passing fames’, sung to the tune of ‘The Black Almain’.

‘Almains’ were dances in slow time, now called Allemandes. Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 42-3, provides a transcript of this tune, which is used for at least three, possibly four sixteenth-century ballads: Peell’s ‘A proper new balade expressing the fames’, (HEH Britwell 18326, c. 1571, EBBA id 32413); John Symons, ‘A pleasant Poesie, or sweete Nosegay… gathered in… the Bible’ (‘A stock of flowers, bedewed with showers’), licensed in 1571; a 1570 broadside, ‘A new Ballade, intituled, Agaynst Rebellious and false rumours’, (‘What rumores now are raised of late’), to the tune ‘Blacke Almaine upon Scissillia’, which has the same stanza pattern as Peell’s ballad; set of tune, ‘Ein schooner Englischer Dantz’ in Bernhard Schmid, the elder, keyboard Tabulatur, Strassburg, 1577. See Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, p. 163

C

‘Callino Casture me’
Handful, EV30121, ‘A Sonet of a Louer in the praise of his lady. To Calen o Custure me: sung at euerie lines end.’

See Chappell’s Popular Music, II.793. The name of tune comes from the title of a ballad, ‘Callin o custure me’ ‘tolerated’ to John Allde, 10 March, 1582, and is thought to be a corruption of the popular Irish gaelic song ‘Cailín óg a stór’ (which translates ‘Young girl, O treasure’). Other ballads sung to this tune include ‘A pleasant Song, made by a Souldier, whose bringing vp had bin dainty, and partly fed by those affections of his vnbridled youth, is now beaten with his owne rod, and therefore tearmeth this his repentance, the fall of his folly’ (Pepys 1.465, c. 1630, EBBA id 20034; Pepys 4.42, c. 1663-74, EBBA id 21708). See Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull’, pp. 161-63. Shakespeare makes reference to tune in Henry V, IV. iv. 4, Pistol: ‘Qualité? ‘Calin o custure me!

‘Cecilia Pavin’
Handful, EV8726, ‘The Louer co[m]plaineth the losse of his Ladie. To Cicilia Pauin’.

Tune is unknown. The ballad is probably the broadside ‘a harte Declarynge his heavenes wyshyng that yt were knowen’, registered by Richard Jones in 1565-6. See Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, pp. 160-1.

‘Come live with me and be my love’
Englands Helicon, EV4829, ‘The passionate Sheepheard to his loue’, Christopher Marlowe.

Englands Helicon, EV10607, ‘The Nimphs reply to the Sheepheard’, Sir Walter Raleigh.

Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 119-22, provides a transcript of this tune, which ‘is suitable for singing tetrameter quatrains’; the ballads sung to this tune in six-line stanzas ‘require a repetition of the second strain, or they may be intended for a tune not now extant’. The tune takes its name from the first line of Marlowe’s lyric printed in The Passionate Pilgrim (1599) and in Englands Helicon (1600), EV4829, ‘The passionate Sheepheard to his loue’; a stanza is sung by Sir Hugh Evans in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, III.i.16-25. This lyric and the reply printed in Englands Helicon, EV10607, ‘The Nimphs reply to the Sheepheard’, were published around 1620 as a broadside ballad under the title ‘A most excellent Ditty of the Lover’s promises to his beloved. To a sweet new tune, called Live with me, and be my Love, with a second part ‘The Ladies prudent answer to her Love. To the same tune’ (Roxburghe 1.205, c. 1619-1629?, EBBA id 30141). This ballad requires the repetition of the third and fourth line of each stanza to make up a six-line stanza; Rollins suggests that it is possibly a later version of a ballad registered in 1603 under the title ‘ye louers promises to his beloved.’ Other ballads naming this tune include: ‘A most sorrowfull Song, setting forth the miserable end of Banister, who betraied the Duke of Buckingham, his Lord and Master’ (registered in 1600, Pepys 1.64-5, c. 1630, EBBA id 20265); ‘The woful Lamentation of Mistris Jane Shore, a Gold-smiths Wife of London, sometimes King Edward the Fourth’s Concubine, who for her wanton life came to a miserable end’ (Euing 394, c. 1663-1674, EBBA id 32019; Pepys 1.486-87, c. 1684-6, EBBA id 20229; Roxburghe 1.162-3, c. 1684-95, EBBA id 30101; Euing 395, c. 1693-5, EBBA id 32020; Roxburge 3.897, c. 1705-1709, EBBA id 31268); ‘The dying tears of a true Lover forsaken, Made on his Deathbed; the hour before his Death’ (Roxburghe 2.126-7, c. 1678-80, EBBA id 30610; Euing 64, c. 1678-80, EBBA id 31742); and Thomas Deloney, ‘The imprisonment of Queen Elenor, wife to King Henrie the second’, Strange Histories (1602), Song 4, sigs. B2-3v.

‘Crimson Velvet’
Englands Helicon, EV20048, ‘Faire Phillis and her Sheepheard’, in one copy of the book (L: C.39.e.48) a seventeenth-century hand adds after the title ‘tune of crimson ueluet’.

Englands Helicon, EV28007, ‘The Sheepheards Song of Venus and Adonis’.

Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 141-2, provides a transcript of this tune, and points out that its ‘popularity… is remarkable in view of the fact that it calls for a complex stanza, usually written in twenty lines… the tune itself, despite its rather monotonous repetitions, has a moving solemnity appropriate to most of the songs written to it’. Ballads sung to this tune include: ‘The lamentable complaint of Queen Mary for the unkind departure of King Philip, in whose absence she fell sick and died’, possibly first published as a broadside soon after Mary’s death in 1558, but the earliest surviving version was first printed in new additions to second edition of Richard Johnson, Crown Garland of Golden Roses (1659), sigs. H4-6; ‘Callis, his wofull Lamentation for her haplesse spoyle’, (transcribed in Shirburn Ballads, pp. 241-44); ‘Of a Prince of England, who wooed the Kings Daughter of France, and how he was slaine, and she after marr[i]ed to a Forrester’, alternative title ‘An excellent ballad, of a prince of England’s courtship to the King of France’s daughter. And how the Prince was disasterously slain, and how the aforesaid Princess was afterwards married to a Forrester’ (transcribed in Shirburn Ballads, pp. 192-8; reprinted in Thomas Deloney, Garland of Good Will (1631), No. 13, sigs. D5v-E1v; Roxburghe 3.839, n.d., EBBA id 31397; Euing 245, c. 1658-64, EBBA id 31794; Pepys 1.514-5, c. 1684-86, EBBA id 20244; Roxburghe 1.102-3, c. 1686-93, EBBA id 30068); and ‘Constance of Cleueland. A very excellent Sonnet of the most faire Lady Constance of Cleveland, and her disloyall Knight’ (licensed in 1603 and 1624; Pepys 1.38-39, c. 1630, EBBA id 20060; Roxburghe 3.94-5, c. 1655-58, EBBA id 30421; Pepys 1.476-77, c. 1674-79, EBBA id 20223). Englands Helicon, EV20048, ‘Faire Phillis and her Sheepheard’, (‘Shepherd saw though not my lovely Phillis’), is reprinted and set to this music, although tune is unnamed, in John Forbes, Cantus, songs and fancies (1662), Song 57, sig. Z2r-v; Englands Helicon, EV28007, ‘The Sheepheards Song of Venus and Adonis’, (‘Venus fair did ride), is reprinted under the title ‘Cant. 13. Of Venus and Adonis. To the tune of Crimson veluet ’ in Thomas Deloney, Strange Histories, (1612), sig. I1-I3v.

D

‘Damon and Pythias’
Handful, EV32315, ‘The lamentation of a woman being wrongfully defamed. To the tune of Damon & Pithias.’

The tune was popular in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign. Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 157-8, provides a transcript of this tune. The broadside ballad attributed to a ‘M. Osb[orne?]’, ‘A Newe Ballad of a Louer extolling his Ladye’, (‘Alas, my harte doth boyle’), (1568) is sung to this tune (BL Huth, transcribed in Seventy-Nine Black-Letter Ballads, pp. 24-6; and Ward, ‘Music from A Handefull, pp. 167-9). The tune probably derives its name from Richard Edward’s Damon and Pythias, performed 1564-5, and printed in 1571. The song in the play, ‘Awake ye wofull Wightes’, Simpson notes, has the same stanza pattern as the broadside ballad, ‘A Newe Ballad of a Louer’, a comparable refrain form, and two identical lines, indicating that the composer of the broadside was imitating Edward’s song. ‘A ballet intituled tow [sic] lamentable songes Pithias and Damon’ was registered in 1565-6, suggesting that songs from the play were issued as broadside ballads. John Phillips set a song to the tune in his play Pacient… Grissill, licensed 1566, sig. C4, ‘Here Grissell Singith a songe, to the tune of Damon & Pithias’, and Edmund Elviden also uses the ‘tune of Damon & pythias’ for a song in his Historie of Pesistratus and Catanea, (1570), sig. C1, ‘O heauie hart dismaid’.

‘Downright Squire, The’
Handful, EV32323, ‘L. Gibsons tantara, wherin Danea welcommeth home her lord Diophon fro[m] the war. To the tune of, Down right Squire.’

Handful, EV32284, ‘A new Sonet of Pyramus and Thisbie. To the, Downe right Squier.’

Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 194-6, provides a transcript of this tune. There is a lute arrangement of the tune that dates from c. 1600, C: MS Dd.2.11, fol. 70; another variant setting of the tune without the title dating from c.1590 is in the Marsh Lute Book, no. 17, pp. 40-1; and a further early variant setting for the lute dating from the late 1550s, titled ‘The upright esquiere’, in F: 448.16, fol. 18v-19. Two other extant ballads, apart from those in Handful, were set to the tune: the earliest, compiled before the end of 1565, is untitled, and begins ‘Ons dyd I aspyre to loves desyre’, (O: Ashmole 48, fol. 118); and a broadside ballad printed c. 1590, T. Rider’s ‘A merie newe Ballad intituled, the Pinnying of the Basket’, (‘Twas my hap of late to heare’), (BM Huth, transcribed in Seventy-Nine Black-Letter Ballads, pp. 105-11). See Ward, ‘Music in A Handefull, p. 155. This ballad tune was also a well-known popular dance tune, see William Webbe’s discussion of the different forms taken by poems in A Discourse of English Poetrie, sig. F4v: ‘neither is there anie tune or stroke which may be sung or plaide on instruments, which hath not some poetical ditties framed according to the numbers thereof: some to Rogero, some to Trenchmore, to downe right Squire, to Galliardes, to Pauines, to Iygges, to Brawles, to all manner of tunes which euerie Fidler knowes better then my selfe, and therefore I will let them passe’.

F

‘Frog Galliard’
Englands Helicon, EV18310, ‘A pastoral of Phillis and Coridon’, attributed to Nicholas Breton.

Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 242-4, provides a transcript of this tune and attributes authorship to John Dowland. It first appears in his First Booke of Songes and Ayres (1597), Song 6, sig. C2v-D1; a setting for lute and five-stringed instruments given the title ‘Frog Galliard’ also appears in Thomas Morley, First Booke of Consort Lessons (1599), Song 10, sig. B2v. Lute settings appear in: F: MS 1610.1, fol. 12v; C: Add. 3056, fol. 42v and Dd.2.11, fol. 93, fol. 40v (untitled); Het Luitboek van Thysius, Song 366; and an untitled set of variants in Euing Lute Book c.1620-30, G: Euing MS 25, fol. 26v. It is given the name ‘The Frogge’ in Thomas Robinson’s New Citharen Lessons (1609), Song 24, sig. G, and in Clement Matchett’s Virginal Book (1612), with a setting by John Willoughby, (Panmure House, Aberdeen, MS En 9448, song 12; transcribed and edited by Thurston Dart, Stainer & Bell, London, n.d.). Two broadside ballads were sung to the tune: ‘The true lovers knot untyed. Being the right path to advise princely virgins how to behave themselves, by the example of the renowned princess Lady Arabella, and the second son to the Lord Seymour late Earl of Hartford’, (‘As I to Ireland did pass’, Wing T2748-50, c. 1674-1700; Euing 356, c. 1623-61, EBBA id 32053; Pepys 4.44, c. 1684-86, EBBA id 21710; Roxburghe 2.468-9, c. 1686-93, EBBA id 3094), which refers to Arabella Stuart’s imprisonment in 1611, and ‘The Shepheard’s Delight. To the tune of Frog Galliard’, c. 1619-29, a longer, variant version of Englands Helicon, EV18310, ‘A pastoral of Phillis and Coridon’ (‘On yonder Hill there springs a flower‘), (Roxburghe 1.388, c. 1619-29, EBBA id 30260; Euing 216, c. 1619-29, EBBA id 31692). Simpson points out that Dowland’s lyrics are trochaic, while the ballads are iambic, although the ballads can be sung to Dowland’s setting.

G

‘Gods of love, The’
Handful EV9908, ‘The ioy of Virginitie: to, The Gods of loue’

Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 260-62, provides a transcript of this tune, which takes its name from William Elderton’s famous ballad, ‘The Gods of Love’, printed in c. 1562, but now lost. A setting of the tune for the cittern is in the Willoughby Lute Book, no, 42, fol. 88v-89, and an untitled setting for keyboard c. 1570 is at the end of Thomas Dallis’s Lute Book, p. 29. The tune is referred to in Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing, when Benedick sings a song beginning ‘The god of love/That sits above’ (V.ii.25-8) and in Thomas Heywood’s Fair Maid of the Exchange (1607), when Frank enters singing a song that begins ‘Ye gods of Loue that sits aboue’ (sig. E), although Simpson points out that the metre of this song does not fit the Elderton ballad. See also Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, p. 164.

‘Greensleeves’
Handful, EV1403, ‘A new Courtly Sonet, of the Lady Green sleeues. To the new tune of Greensleeues.’

Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, 268-78, provides transcripts of the tune and its variants. It is one of the most popular broadside tunes. The earliest surviving reference to the tune is on 3 September 1580, when Richard Jones was licensed to print the now-lost ballad, ‘A newe northern Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves’, which presumably was the ballad printed in Handful, EV1403, ‘A new Courtly Sonet, of the Lady Green sleeues’; on the same day, Edward White was licensed to print the now-lost ‘ye Ladie Greene Sleeves answere to Donkyn hir frende’. Further ballads to this tune, which are now lost, followed in quick succession in 1580: on 15 September, Henry Carr was licensed to print the ballad ‘Greene Sleves moralised’; on 18 September White registered the ballad ‘Greene Sleves and Countenaunce in Countenaunce is Greene Sleves’; on 6 October, the ballad ‘The Lord of Lorne and the false Steward’ to tune of ‘Greensleeves’ or ‘Greenesleeves and Pudding-Pies’ was licensed (reprinted in the later seventeenth century, Pepys, 1. 494-5, c. 1684-1686, EBBA id 20233); and in December Jones entered ‘A merry newe Northen Songe of Greenesleves begynninge the boniest lasse in all the land’. The next year, 1581, William Elderton’s now-lost ballad, ‘A Reprehension against Greene Sleves’ was registered in February, and on 30 May, he was licensed to print ‘A new Ballad… Treason… against the young King of Scots [prevented by] one Andrew Browne.. the Kings Chamberlaine’, to the tune of ‘Milfield, or els… Greenseleeues’ (London Society of Antiquaries, Lemon, Catalogue, No. 71; repr. Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1767), 3 vols. II.204-10, No. 17); and in August, White registered the now-lost ballad ‘Greene Sleeves is worne awaie, Yellowe Sleeves Comme to decaie, Blacke Sleeves I holde in despite, But White Sleeves is my delighte’. Ballads were also sung to the tune in the later seventeenth century, including ‘A New Song of Lulla By, or, Father Peter’s Policy Discovered’ (Pepys 5.128, c. 1688-92, EBBA id 22394). Musical settings can be found in: William Ballet’s MS Lute Book, TCD D.I.21, p. 104; F: MS 1610.1, fol. 5, with treble and ground tablature for two lutes; L: Add 313992, fol. 29, with lute arrangement by ‘maister Cuttinge’; C: MSS Dd.3.18, fol. 8v for the lute, and Dd.4.23., fol. 25 for the cittern; Het Luitboek van Thysius, no. 70, c.1600; L: Add. 18936, fol. 58, early 1600s medley for four voices by William Cobbold and lines from original ballad; Paris Conservatoire MS Res 1186, fol. 101, for virginals; A Booke of New Lessons for the Cithern and Gittern, (1652), p. 31. Simpson also lists further later versions from the late seventeenth-century to the nineteenth century, and the subsidiary tunes it generated. On the Handful ballad, see Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, pp. 156-7.

Shakespeare refers to ballad twice in Merry Wives of Windsor: Mistress Ford complains ‘they do no more adhere and keep place together than the hundred and fifty psalm to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’ (II.i.58-60); and Falstaff exclaims ‘Let the sky rain potatoes, let it thunder to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’, hail kissing-comfits, and snow eringoes.’ (V.v.18-20).

I

‘I loath that I did love’
Gorgious, EV32300, ‘The Lover complaineth of his Ladies vnconstancy to the Tune of I lothe that I did loue.’

?Tottel, TP762, ‘The aged louer renounceth loue’, Lord Thomas Vaux.

Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 340-1, provides a transcript of this tune, which probably dates from second half of sixteenth century. The tune may take its name from the first line of Vaux’s ‘The aged louer renounceth loue’, Tottel, TP762, which was set to the lute in an early seventeenth-century miscellany, L: Add. 4900, fol. 62v-63; a second setting of the poem can be found in L: Add. 38599, fol. 134v.

‘I loved her overwell’
Handful, EV613, ‘A Nosegaie alwaies sweet.’

Handful, EV30161, ‘The painefull plight of a Louer oppressed with the beautifull looks of his Lady. To the tune of, I loued her ouer wel.’

Handful, EV24214, ‘The lover compareth him self to the painful Falconer. To the tune, I loued her ouer wel.’

A section of Gorgious Gallery, EV31995, ‘The Lady beloved exclaimeth of the great untruth of her lover’, ll. 40-7, is imitated from lines in a ballad in Handful, EV30161, ‘The painefull plight’, ll. 25-32, 34, possibly indicating that these ballads were sung to the same tune.

The tune is unknown. William Griffith registered a possible reply to Handful, EV30161: ‘The painefull plight of a Louer’ in 1567-8 (Arber, I.362), ‘a ffarewell to Alas I lover [sic] you over well &c.’ Ward argues that Handful, EV613, ‘A Nosegaie alwaies sweet’ can be sung to the same tune as Handful, EV30161: ‘The painefull plight of a Louer’, ‘Music for A Handefull, p. 155.

‘I wish to see those happy days’
Handful, EV10449, ‘A proper new song made by a Studient in Cambridge, To the tune of I wish to see those happie daies.’

Tune unknown. Rollins surmises that the author was Thomas Richardson, admitted to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1572, and therefore the ‘T. Richeson’ whose name is attributed to a ballad to be sung ‘To the toune of ‘The raire & greatest gift’ – this tune is also unknown.

‘In Peascod Time’
Englands Helicon, EV12112, ‘The Sheepheards slumber’.

Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 368-71, provides a transcript of this popular tune and suggests that it takes its name from the first line of the lyric in Englands Helicon, EV12112, ‘The Sheepheards slumber’, ‘In Pescod time, when Hound to horne’, (there is an earlier printed version of this lyric in Thomas Churchyard’s A pleasant labyrinth called Churchyard’s chance, (1580), given the title ‘A matter of fonde Cupid, and vain Venus’, fols. 13-14). The musical setting was first printed in Anthony Holborne, The Cittharn School, (1597), sig. C1v. For William Byrd’s settings of this tune, see Simpson, p. 368. Ballads sung to this tune include ‘A Lamentable Ballad of the Ladies Fall’, (‘Mark well my heavy doleful Tale’, licenced in 1603 (Pepys 1.510-11, c. 1686-8, EBBA id 20242; Roxburghe 3.148-9, c. 1674-1679, EBBA id 30454, 3.164-5, EBBA id 30466, 3.570-71, c. 1720?, EBBA id 31270). For details of other titles taken by this tune, see Simpson pp. 369-70.

K

‘King Solomon’
Handful, fragment ‘So that his sorrowes importunate,/Had ended his life incontinent.’

Simpson British Broadside Ballad, pp. 410-12, provides a transcript of this tune which is thought to take its name from William Elderton’s very popular Elizabethan ballad ‘The Pangs of Love and Lovers’ Fits’ (Was not good Kyng Salamon’) registered in 1558-9 (Arber, I. 96; HEH Britwell 18292, c. 1559, EBBA id 32224). The tune was given the name ‘Guerre guerre gay’ in European collections. ‘A new ballet after the tune of kynge Salomon’ was registered in 1561-2; this was probably R.M.’s ‘A newe Ballad’ (‘O Dere Lady Elysabeth, which art our right and vertous Quene’), (BL Huth; ballad is reprinted, although tune is not named, in Harleian Miscellany, ed. Thomas Park, 10 vols. (London, 1813), X. 262), since it has the same four-line stanza as ‘A newe ballet… kynge Salomon’. Other ballads using the tune include: George Mell, ‘A Proper New Balad of the Bryber Gehesie’, entered by Thomas Colwell in 1566-7 (BL Huth); ‘The Ballad of constant Susanna’ (‘There dwelt a man in Babylon’) (Roxburghe 1.60-1, c. 1602-46, EBBA id 30043) entered in 1562-3, and 1624 – the 1675 re-entry is a later form of the ballad. Cittern and gittern settings for the tune can be found in the Mulliner Book, no. 127, p. 197 [fol. 123]; and a keyboard setting in Thomas Dallis’s Lute Book, p. 21. On the Handful ballad, see Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, p. 160.

In A new and mery enterlude, called the triall of treasure (1567), Inclination sings a song with a similar structure and the same ‘Lady, lady/My dear Lady’ refrain as Elderton’s ballad, beginning ‘Am not I in blessed case’ (sig. D4v-E1), and in John Pikering, A newe enterlude of vice conteyninge, the historye of Horestes, Egistus and Clytemnestra enter singing a song with the ‘Lady, lady/My dear Lady’ refrain ‘to ye tune of King Salomon’, beginning ‘And was it not a worthy sight’ (sig. C2r-v). Feliche in John Marston, Antonio and Mellida (1602), towards the end of Act III, sings ‘And was not good king Salomon’ (I.42) and Robert Armin refers to the song ‘good King Salomon’ in Two Maids of Moreclacke (1609), sig. C3v; Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, sings a snatch from the song ‘There dwelt a man in Babylon, lady, lady’ ( II.iii.75-6); a moralized parody ‘Ane Dissuasioun from Vaine Lust’, (‘Was not Salomon, the King’), with the refrain ‘Allace, allace!’/’As come to pas’, could be sung to tune and was printed in A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs (1567) (ed. A. F. Mitchell, The Scottish Text Society. London and Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1897), pp. 213-18; a Scottish version, ‘Was not god king salamon/reuisit in sindry wyiss’, is in The Bannatyne Manuscript, Writtin in Tyme of Pest 1568, (ed. W. Tod Richie, The Scottish Text Society. London and Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1928), III.254-56.

‘Kypascie’
Handful, EV22398, ‘A sonnet of two faithfull Louers, exhorting one another to be constant. To the tune of Kypascie.’

The name of the tune comes from a dance called Qui passa, and different settings for different keys and for the lute and cittern can be found in the Willoughby Lute book, nos. 36-9, 43, 45, fols. 83v-88r, 89, 90, and in the Marsh Lute book, nos 103-4, 137-8 (for the bandora), pp. 251, 257, 380. The tune ‘Que passa’ is named for William Elderton’s ‘A proper newe Ballad sheweing that philosophers learnynges are full of good warnynges… songe to the tune of my Lorde Marques Galyarde, or the firste traces of Que passa’, which was registered in 1568. However, this ballad has different measure to EV22398 ‘A sonnet of two faithful lovers’, which confirms that there was more than one tune bearing this name. See Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, p. 166.

L

‘Labandala Shot’
Handful, EV10409, ‘A sorrowful sonnet, made by George Mannington, at Cambridge Castle. To the tune of Labandala Shot.’

Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 418-20, provides a transcript of this tune, that takes its name from a sixteenth-century dance tune. There is a more elaborate setting in Marsh MS Lute Book, no. 131, p. 368, and it is given the title ‘Galiard Labandala shotta’ in the Willoughby Lute Book, no, 19, fols. 22v-23 – as Simpson notes, these latter two lute settings establish a forty-bar tune which fits the ten-line stanza of ballads naming the tune. ‘A sorrowful sonnet, made by George Mannington’ in Handful is the most popular lyric sung to tune, and dates from soon after Mannington’s execution in 1576. See also Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull’, pp. 173-4. Other ballads naming the tune include: D. Sterrie’s ‘A briefe sonet declaring the lamentation of Beckles, a Market Towne in Suffolke which was in the great winde vpon S. Andrewes eue pitifully burned with fire to the value by estimation of tweentie thousande pounds’ (‘My louing good neighbours, that comes to beholde’, HEH Britwell 18342, 1586, EBBA id 32522); ‘A proper new ballad, devised vpon the theam I know not what; wherein is shewed how men ought not to set their mindes on worldlye pleasure, but on the lyving Lord. 1614’, (‘Who viewes the lyfe of mortall men’; transcribed in the Shirburn Ballads, pp. 50-4); ‘An excellent Song, entituled, A penny-worth of Wit’, (‘In ancient years as bookes expresse’), in Richard Johnson, Golden Garland of Princely Pleasures (3rd ed., 1620), sig. E5-8.

Quicksilver produces a ballad ‘in imitation of Mannigtons; he that was hangd at Cambridge, that cut off the Horses head at a blow’, sung ‘To the tune of I waile in woe, I plunge in paine’, named after the first line of the Handful ballad, in Act 5, scene 5 of Eastward Hoe, (1605), beginning ‘In Cheapside famous for Gold, and Plate’ (sig. H3r-v); John Taylor, in An Armado, or Nauye of 103. Ships (1627), refers to the first line of the ballad ‘I wayle in woe and plunge in paine’ as dance-tune (sig. C1v). There is a reference to the tune in stage directions at the end of scene 3, Act 5, of Hispanus (1596), (Bod. MS Douce 234, fol. 36), a Cambridge University play in Latin. The anonymous comedy, Looke about you (c. 1600), refers to the tune as a hanging ballad: ‘I heare say Redcaps father shall bee hanged this after noone, Ile see him slip a string though I giue my seruice the slip; beside my Lady bad me heare his examination at his death: Ile get a good place, and pen it word for word, and as I like it, set out a moornefull Dittie to the tune of Labandalashot, or rowe wel ye Marriners, or somwhat as my muse shall me inuoke’ (sig. F1).

‘Light o’ Love’
Gorgious Gallery, EV16204, ‘The Lover exhorteth his Lady to be constant’, first line, ‘Not light of loue lady’, possibly alludes to ballad tune, ‘Light o’ Love’.

Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 447-8, provides a transcript of this tune. Music for this tune is in songbooks which date from c. 1600: William Ballet’s MS Lute book, TCD D.I.21, p. 103, as ‘lighttie loue ladyes’ (also reprinted in Chappell, Popular Music, I.82-84); and Het Luitboek van Thysius, no. 382, as ‘Engelsche Volte’. John Playford’s A Booke of New Lessons for the Cithern and Gittern, (1652), pp. 16-17, also includes a setting for ‘Light of Love’. Ballads sung to the tune include: Leonard Gybson, ‘A very proper Dittie: to the tune of Lightie Loue’, (text reprinted in Chappell, Popular Music, I.83-84); Thomas Deloney, ‘Of the Lord Matreuers and Sir Thomas Gurney, being banished’, (‘Alas that euer that day we did see’, Strange Histories (1602), sig. C1v-C3); ‘The poore people’s complaint vpon therle of Bedfordes death’, licensed to Yarrath James, August 1586, (Rollins, Anal. Index, 2138; transcribed in the Shirburn Ballads, pp. 256-59); ‘A new Song of the wooing of Queen Katherine, by a gallant yong Gentleman of Wales named Owen Tudor: lately translated out of Welch into our English phrase’, to the tune ‘Light in leue Ladies’, (‘I salute thee sweet Princess, with titles of Grace’), printed in Richard Johnson, Golden Garland of Princely Pleasures, (3rd ed., 1620), sig. A5v-7v.

Shakespeare cites the tune in two plays: Lucetta in Two Gentlemen of Verona, says to her mistress, Julia, ‘That I might sing it, madam, to a tune,/Give me a note. Your Ladyship can set’, to which Julia replies ‘As little by such toys as may be possible./Best sing it to the tune of “Light o’ love”’ (I.ii.80-3); and in another conversation between a lady and her maid, in Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice says ‘I am out of all other tune, methinks’, to which Margaret replies, ‘Clap’s into “Light o’ love”. That goes without a burden. Do you sing it, and I’ll dance it’ (III.iv.39-41).

‘Lumber me’
Handful, EV21072, ‘A proper new Dity: Intituled Fie vpo[n] Loue and all his lawes. To the tune of lumber me.’

Simpson, British Broadside Ballad, pp. 475-6, provides a transcript of this tune. Its name is a corruption of ‘L’homme armé’, a type of a branle, or dance, fashionable in Europe during second half of sixteenth century. The music for this dance is printed in: Jan Fruytier’s Ecclesiasticus (1565), ed. D.F. Scheurleer, (Amsterdam: F. Muller, 1898), p. 95; Sebastbian Vreedman’s Carminum… Liber Secundus (1569), fol. 16v; and in Het Luitboek van Thysius, c. 1600, nos. 8 and 106. There is an untitled English keyboard setting of the dance, which Ward dates to c. 1570, at end of Thomas Dallis’s Lute Book, p. 25. See Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, pp. 166-7.

‘Lusty Gallant’
Handful, EV27638, ‘A proper Song, Intituled: Fain wold I haue a pretie thing to give vnto my Ladie. To the tune of lustie Gallant.’

Gorgious Gallery, EV22650, ‘A propper Dittie. To the tune of lusty Gallant.’

Simpson in British Broadside Ballad, pp. 476-8, provides a transcript of this tune, and discusses two late sixteenth-century manuscript versions in William Ballet’s MS Lute Book, TCD D.I.21, p. 83 (setting printed in Chappell, Popular Music, I.234 -6), and the setting in the Marsh Lute Book, no. 30, p. 61, which is adapted to an 8-line stanza. A ballad in O: Ashmole 48 (c. 1566): ‘I rede howe that the marbell stone’ names tune of ‘lusty Gallant’ (fol. 112-14), while a second ballad, ‘When Troylus dwelt in Troy towne’ (120v-21v) names the tune ‘Fayne woold I fynd sum pretty thynge to geeve unto my lady’, which takes its title from ballad in Handful sung to the tune of ‘lusty Gallant’, and so presumably can be sung to the same setting. This Troilus ballad was licensed in 1565-6 by Thomas Purgoote under the title ‘The history of Troilus Whose throtes hath Well bene tryed’ (Arber, 1.300; Rollins, Anal. Index, 1124). The ballad printed in Handful is also copied in O: Rawl. poet. 108, c. 1570, which names the tune ‘lusty gallaunt’ (‘ffayne wold I haue a p[re]tye thinge/to geue vnto my ladye’). See Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, p. 169.

‘Lusty gallant’ was a very popular broadside ballad tune, see: William Elderton’s ‘A proper new Balad in praise of my Ladies Marques, whose Death is bewailed to the Tune of New lusty gallant’, licensed in 1568-9, (‘Ladies, I thinke you maruell that’; transcribed in Seventy-Nine Black-Letter Ballads, pp. 14-16); ‘Londons Lotterie: With an incouragement to the furtherance thereof, for the good of Virginia, and the benefite of this our natiue Countrie’, (‘London, liue thou famous long’; Pepys 1.190-91, 1612, EBBA id 20085); ‘A brave warlike Song’, (Pepys 1.88-89, c. 1626, EBBA id 20277), (Simpson notes that the tune named for this ballad ‘List lusty gallants’ possibly referred to a longer tune than ‘Lusty Gallant’ as the text requires the notes of ‘Lusty Gallant’ to be sung four times over); ‘The sorrowfull complaint of Susan Higges, a lusty Countrey Wench, dwelling in Risborrow in Buckinghamshire, who for twenty yeeres, most gallantly maintained her selfe by Robberies on the high-way side, and such like practices’ (‘To mourne for my offences’; Pepys 1.113, c. 1630, EBBA id 20002).

Allusions are made to ‘Lusty Gallant’ in texts of the period often specifically as a dance tune, see: Nicholas Breton, Works of a Young Wit, (1577):

Our banquet doone, we had our musicke by,
And then, you knowe the youth must needes goe daunce,
First Galliardes, then Larous, and Heidegy –
Old lustie gallant , all floures of the broome,
and then a hall, for dauncers must have roome. (fol. 30)

Thomas Nashe, Terrors of the Night (1594): ‘After all they had danst Lustie gallant, & a drunken Danish Laualto or two, and so departed’ (sig. G2-v).

M

‘Merchant’s daughter went over the field, The’
Handful, EV14345, ‘A proper wooing song, entitled: Maid will ye love me: ye or no? To the tune of the Merchant’s daughter went over the field.’

The tune is unknown. Rollins suggests it might be related to another ballad in Handful, EV14346: ‘A proper Sonet, Intituled, Maid, wil you marrie’, sung to the tune ‘The Blacke Almaine’, and with the first line, ‘Maid, will you marry, I pray sir tarry’.

N

‘Nine Muses, The’
Handful, EV23618, ‘A proper Sonet, of an vnkinde Damsell, to her faithful Louer. To, the nine muses.’

The tune is unknown, and was also used for ‘Of the horrible and wofull destruction of Sodome and Gomorra. To the tune of the Nine Muses’, printed by Richard Jones for Henry Kirkham, (transcribed in Seventy-Nine Black-Letter Ballads, pp. 125-28), licensed in 1570-71. See Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, p. 174.

P

‘Painter, The’
Handful, EV30140, ‘The Louer compareth some subtile Suters to the Hunter. To the tune of the Painter’.

Simpson British Broadside Ballad, p. 132, n. 6, suggests that this tune probably took its name from the ballad, ‘ye painter in his pryntyshod’, which was licensed in 1565-6, however no music for this ballad survives. In John Pikering’s A newe enterlude of vice conteyninge, the historye of Horestes (1567), Vice enters ‘synginge this song [‘Stand backe ye slepinge iackes at home’] to ye tune of the Paynter’ (sig. E4); and a ‘A new song of an hostisse and her guests’, (‘I will not to Saint Katherines goe’), is also sung to this tune in Richard Johnson, Crown Garland of Golden Roses (1612), sig. F3v-4. The syllabic stanza pattern for these three poems is 8.4.8.4.8.8.8.8. See Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, p. 161.

‘Pleasant New Tune’
Englands Helicon, EV2745, ‘Another of the same shepherds’

Generic term for diverse tunes. A version of Richard Barnfield’s ‘As it fell upon a day’, Englands Helicon, EV2745: ‘Another of the same shepherds’, was reprinted as a broadside ballad, ‘A Louers newest Curranto, or the Lamentation of a young mans folly. To a pleasant new tune’, c. 1625 (Pepys 1.341, EBBA id 20014)

Q

‘Quatre Branles’
Handful, EV5310, ‘The Historie of Diana and Acteon. To the Quarter Braules.’

Simpson in British Broadside Ballad, p. 586, provides a transcript of this tune. The branle (or braul, brawl) was a popular sixteenth-century dance in which dancers moved sideways, and was adopted in England along with the pavan, galliard and courante. The tune probably derives from a now-lost broadside ballad ‘the Cater bralles bothe Wytty and mery’ registered by Thomas Cowell in 1565-6 (Arber, I.298; Rollins, Anal. Index, 265). The tune, ‘Quatre brant’, was printed in: Carminum quae Chely vel Testudine canuntur, Liber primus, (1549), sig. H1v, published by Pierre Phalèse of Louvain; Tielman Susato’s Danserye (1551), ed. F. J. Giesbert (Mainz: Schott, 1936), I.28; and Het Luitboek van Thysius, c. (1600), no. 412. The tune ‘Quarte bransle’ is also cited in a miscellany, c. 1570s, F: MS 448.16, fol. 15v. See Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, p. 159

R

‘Raging Love’
Handful, EV26412, ‘The complaint of a woman Louer. To the tune of, Raging loue.’

Tottel, TP2184, ‘The louer comforteth himself with the worthinesse of his loue.’

The tune takes its name from first line of Surrey’s TP2184 ‘The louer comforteth himself with the worthinesse of his loue’ in Tottel, which was registered for publication as a broadside ballad in 1557, 1560-61, 1561-2 (Arber, I. 75, 154, 177). Ward suggests, in ‘Music for a Handefull, that this tune first ‘entered the ballad repertoire, probably shortly after 1558, with the broadside printing of Surrey’s poem’, although ‘Surrey’s poem and the Handful ballad have little more than their metrical pattern in common, which means that the tune shared by the two poems is a purely neutral element, providing a means of performance without contributing any special character of its own to the resulting song’ (pp. 153-4, see also 165-6).

‘Rogero’
Handful, EV19948, ‘A faithfull vow of two constant Louers. To the new Rogero.’

Paradise, EV17058, ‘The Complaint of a Synner’, a copy of the 1596 edition in the Folger library (F: cs0361) has a note beside the title ‘To the Tune of Rogero’.

Simpson in British Broadside Ballad, pp. 612-4, provides a transcript of ‘Rogero’, which takes its name from Aria di Ruggiero. The air was one of several sixteenth-century Italian ground basses (a series of bass notes) on which singer could extemporise a descant when chanting epic poetry. The most widely used Ruggiero formula took its name from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1532), Canto 44, stanza 61, beginning ‘Ruggier, qual sempre fui, tal esser voglio’. The ballad tune, however, was not this original Italian formula, but rather a descant built on and harmonised with the Ruggiero bass. Versions of the tune are provided in: C: MS Dd.4.23, fol. 23v and MS Dd.14.24, fol. 1, both settings for the cittern; Marsh Lute Book, no. 118, p. 305 and C: MS Dd.3.18, fol. 1, all settings for the lute. Simpson points out that ‘None of these settings retain Italian bass’, instead ‘”Rogero” consists of four brief musical phrases, each with a loose cadence, … giving the air such flexibility that it can be used for singing quatrains of ballad meter (8.6.8.6), trimeter (6.6.6.6) or poulter’s measure (6.6.8.6)’. See also Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, pp. 170-3. The ballad tune was also a well-known popular dance tune, see William Webbe’s discussion of the different forms taken by poems in A Discourse of English Poetrie, sig. F4v: ‘neither is there anie tune or stroke which may be sung or plaide on instruments, which hath not some poetical ditties framed according to the numbers thereof: some to Rogero, some to Trenchmore, to downe right Squire, to Galliardes, to Pauines, to Iygges, to Brawles, to all manner of tunes which euerie Fidler knowes better then my selfe, and therefore I will let them passe’.

The tune is called ‘New Rogero’ in three 1580s ballads including Handful, EV19948, ‘The faithful vow of two constant lovers’, William Elderton, ‘The Lamentation of Follie. To the tune of New Rogero’ (‘Alas what meaneth man’), (transcribed in Collier’s Old Ballads, pp. 45-9); Arthur Bourcher, ‘A worth Mirrour, wherein you may Marke, an excellent discourse of a breeding Larke’, (‘A Larke sometimes did breede’), (HEH Britwell 18271 c. 1589, EBBA id 32090; Roxburghe 1.464-5, c. 1602-46, EBBA id 30312). The tune was named for ballads in Thomas Deloney, Strange Histories (1602), ‘The valiant courage and policie of the Kentishmen with long tayles’, sig. A2-3v; in Richard Johnson’s Crown Garland of Golden Roses (1612), ‘A pleasant new sonnet, intituled mine owne deare lady brave’, sig. F6-7; and in Richard Johnson’s Golden Garland of Princely Pleasures (3rd ed. 1620), ‘A lamentable Song of lady Elinor’, sig. D3v-4v. Other uses of tune for broadside ballads include: ‘A Right Godly and Christiane a.b.c.’ (‘Arise, and walke from wickednesse’), (Roxburghe 1.492, c. 1601-40, EBBA id 30328) and ‘The torment of a Jealious minde’ (‘All such as lead a Jealous lyfe’), (transcribed in the Shirburn Ballads, pp. 263-7); ‘A most Godly and Comfortable Ballad of the Glorious Resurrection’ (‘What faithful [faithless] froward sinful man’), (Pepys 2.20-1, c. 1684-6, EBBA id 20645; Roxburghe 1.258-9, c. 1624-80, EBBA id 30184; Roxburghe I. 389, c. 1686-93, EBBA id 30081; Euing 224, c.1658-64, EBBA id 31735); ‘A new Sonnet, shewing how the Goddesse Diana transformed Actaeon into the shape of a Hart’ (‘Diana and her Darlings Deare’), (Pepys 1.480-81, c. 1685-6, EBBA id 20225; Roxburghe 1.326-7, c. 1686-93, EBBA id 30258; Roxburghe 3.422-3, c.1725-62, EBBA id 31115; Euing 251, c. 1674-79, EBBA id 31802); ‘The Norfolk Gentleman his last Will and Testament’ (‘Now ponder well you parents dear’), (Pepys 1.518-19, c. 1686-8, EBBA 20246; Roxburghe 1.284-5, c. 1602-46, EBBA id 30201; Roxburghe 3.586-587, c. 1730-69, EBBA id 31289; Euing 254-5, c. 1658-74, EBBA id 31808-9); ‘A comfortable new Ballad of a Dreame of a Sinner’ (‘In slumbering sleepe I lay’), (Pepys 1.39, EBBA id 20025), licensed in 1624.

‘Row well, ye Mariners’
Handful, Not in database yet ‘A proper sonet, wherin the Louer dolefully sheweth his grief to his L. & requireth pity. To the tune of, Row wel ye Marriners.’

Simpson in British Broadside Ballad, pp. 618-9, provides a transcript of this tune, and notes: ‘The complex melody calls for a twelve-line stanza, each quatrain of which is metrically distinctive, but all the sixteenth-century ballads naming the tune may be sung very smoothly to it.’ The tune was published in Thomas Robinson, Schoole of Musicke (1603), sig. D2, and The Dancing Master (1651), p. 102. See Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, p. 158. A number of now-lost broadside ballads were entered in the Stationers’ Register between 1565 and 1570: ‘Roowe well ye marynors &c.’ was licensed to William Pekering in 1565-6; ‘Roo well yee marynors moralyzed’ (entered twice) and ‘stande faste ye marynours’ in 1566-7; ‘Rowe well ye Christes marynours’ and ‘Rowe well Godes marynours’ in 1567-68; and ‘Rowe well ye marynours for those that loke bygge’ in 1569-70. Three ballads now in the Huntington Library name the tune: Thomas Preston, ‘A Lamentation from Rome’ (1570), (‘All you that newes would here’), (transcribed in Collier’s Old Ballads, pp. 68-72; HEH Britwell 18330, c. 1570, EBBA 32480); Steven Peele, ‘A letter to Rome’ (‘Who keeps Saint Angell gates’), on the execution of John Felton, 15 May, 1570 (transcribed in Collier’s Old Ballads, pp. 64-8); Ralph Norris, ‘A Warning to London by the fall of Antwerp’ (‘The sturdy Oke at length’), probable date of November 1576 when Antwerp fell (transcribed in Collier’s Old Ballads, pp. 89-92). The tune was also used for ‘A Ballet, declaring how euerye Christian ought to prepare them selffe’, (‘Marche out, godes souldiours’), L: MS Cotton Vespasian A.xxxv, fol. 150v [olim 159v].

The anonymous comedy, Looke about you (c. 1600), refers to the tune as a hanging ballad: ‘I heare say Redcaps father shall bee hanged this after noone, Ile see him slip a string though I giue my seruice the slip; beside my Lady bad me heare his examination at his death: Ile get a good place, and pen it word for word, and as I like it, set out a moornefull Dittie to the tune of Labandalashot, or rowe wel ye Marriners, or somwhat as my muse shall me inuoke’ (sig. F1).

S

‘Salisbury plain’
Handful, EV32107, ‘A warning for Wooers, that they be not ouer hastie, nor deceiued with womens beautie. To, Salisburie Plaine.’

The tune is unknown. See Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, p. 165

W

‘When Cupid scaled first the Fort’
Gorgious Gallery, EV18735, ‘An exellent Sonet, Wherin the Louer exclaymeth agaynst Detraction, beeing the principall cause of his care. To the tune, when Cupid scaled first the Fort.’

Tottel, TP2156, ‘Th’assault of Cupid upon the fort where the lovers heart lay wounded and how he was taken.’

The tune is named for the first line of Vaux’s poem in Tottel, TP2156, ‘Th’assault of Cupid upon the fort where the lovers heart lay wounded and how he was taken’. Vaux’s poem was licensed by Thomas Purfoote for printing as a ballad, ‘The Cruell assaulte of Cupydes forte’, in 1565-66 (Arber, I.303; Rollins, Anal. Index, 430); the printer-poet John Awdeley put out a moralised version, ‘The Cruel Assault of God’s Fort’, (‘By Edward the sixt, of England kyng’), (transcribed in Collier, Old Ballads, pp. 29-37).

‘Where is the life that late I led’
Gorgious Gallery, EV11170, ‘The Lover wounded with his Lady’s beauty craveth mercy. To the tune of where is the life that late I led’. This ballad borrows a number of its lines from two ballads in Handful, possibly suggesting a similarity between the tunes EV23218.5, ‘The Louer being wounded with his Ladies beautie, requireth mercy. To the tune of Apelles’, and EV26412, ‘The complaint of a woman Louer, To the tune of Raging loue’.

Handful, EV23169, ‘Dame Beauties replie to the Louer late at libertie: and now complaineth himself to be her captiue, Intituled: Where is the life that late I led.’

Tune derives from a now lost ballad referred to in the title of another poem in Handful, EV23169, ‘Dame Beauties replie to the Louer late at libertie: and now complaineth himself to be her captiue, Intituled: Where is the life that late I led’, that is, the ballad Dame Beauty replies to is called ‘Where is the life that late I led’, see Ward, ‘Music for A Handefull, p. 156. Rollins (Handful, p. 89-90) conjectures that this lost ballad was probably the one registered by Richard Jones in March 1566, ‘a newe ballet of one who myslykeng his lybertie soughte his owne bondage through his owne folly’ (Arber, I.308); he also suggests that the initials ‘I.P’ ascribed to EV23169, ‘Dame Beauties replie to the Louer late at libertie’, are those of John Pitt or Pitts, a prolific writer of broadsides – Jones published a broadside ballad, ‘A meruaylous straunge deformed Swyne’, attributed to ‘I.P’ in 1571.

This now lost ballad is referred to in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, when Petruchio sings ‘Where is the life that late I led?/Where are those–’ (IV.i .126-7); and 2Henry IV, Pistol: ‘”Where is the life that late I led?” say they./Why, here it is. Welcome these pleasant days’ (V.iii.139-40).

‘Willow, Willow’
Gorgious Gallery, EV468 [title]. EV15339 [Poem], ‘A Louer approuing his Lady vnkinde. Is forsed vnwilling to vtter his minde.’

Simpson in British Broadside Ballad, pp. 788-90, provides a transcript of the tune. Desdemona’s song in Othello, IV.iii.38-49, ‘The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree’, is sung to this tune, and has the same refrain as the ballad in Gorgious Gallery, EV15339, ‘A Louer approuing his Lady vnkinde’ – ‘Willow willow willow, singe all of greene willow/Sing all of greene willow, shall bee my Garland’. The text of Desdemona’s song is similar to two early seventeenth-century broadside ballads, ‘A Louers complaint being forsaken of his Loue’ (‘A Poore soule sat sighing under a Sicamore tree’), (Pepys I.358, c. 1615, EBBA id 20167); and ‘The Complaint of a Lover forsaken of his Love’ (‘A poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree’), (printed by MP for Edward Wright, Roxburghe I. 54-55, c. 1611-56, EBBA id 30040). Both of these ballads are to be sung ‘To a pleasant new Tune’, presumably ‘Willow, Willow’. The text of a third ballad that has 8 stanzas instead of 23 stanzas of the broadside ballads, and dates from c. 1630, can be found in L: Add. 15117, fol. 18, among group of lute songs. Simpson points out that the ‘anapestic tetrameter couplets forming the body of each stanza are metrically identical in all versions of the song’. The song was popular in broadside literature until nineteenth century. There is a 1570s lute setting, ‘All of grene willowe’, in F: MS 448.16, fol. 19, (facsimile in Shakespeare Quarterly, IX, (1958), 420), however, Simpson points out that this setting does not fit either the broadsides or Shakespeare’s song.